John.
From looking at his curricular vitae and other information, it seems Robert Gorter is a clinical compassionate innovator. Meaning he gives full faith and credit to innovations like DCVAX, which was created before he started using the technology. My guess is that DCVAX is making his dendritic product, but reimbursement from the government, instead of patients, is just around the corner.
Those who are concerned about competition, I hardly think you need fret. Dr. Gorter has no patents on an autologous dendritic product to my knowledge. He has not sponsored/conducted large stage 2 or 3 studies, instead he is simply using parallel clinical therapy, but instead of using concurrent chemotherapy with DCVAX [or DCVAX-"like"] dendritic cells, he is using hyperthermia. Hyperthermia is being studied throughout the world -- check pubmed.
Anyway, as you know, he apparently is finding that DCVAX-L plus radio chemotherapy can be replaced with DCVAX-L plus hyperthermia.
Thank God he is in Germany, because big pharma would likely politically destroy him in other parts of the world.
I posted an article recently that said Roche is getting very angry with the German government for its transparent drug pricing legislation. Roche gave one of their recent chemotherapies as an example. Germany tends to be the benchmark with which other countries in Europe set their drug prices. I'm told by a pharmacist with their PHd that the countries then use their nation's GDP and a few other standard quantifiable data along with German price points to calibrate what their own country will charge for drugs.
You can imagine the importance that final passage of this current German legislation will do for patients in Germany and every European country, plus you can imagine the fear that big pharma has when very large private clinical therapies exclude chemotherapy from dendritic treatment and instead use concurrent hyperthermia.
You can also imagine the importance for Doctor Gorter's patients, and patients everywhere, what a final decision concerning German Government reimbursement for DCVAX (which also includes price point standards) will mean.
